I point out the above because they pretty clearly illustrate the nuance and layers that the Left sees in this war. Go ahead, click on ’em – these four are pretty indicative of the poetic license taken by a couple of underemployed graphic designers at Slate. To wit, if you click on this last one, here’e the text (no c/p from Flash, so I am painstakingly typing the whole bloody thing):

Hezbollah and al-Quaida: It’s Complicated

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has publicly denounced al-Quaida, and an al-Quaida official in Iraq called the Shiite Hezbollah an “enemy of the Sunnis.” But despite the groups’ sectarian differences, there is some evidence of past collaboration. The 9/11 Commission reported in 2004 that al-Quaida members received weapons and intelligence training at Hezbollah camps in Lebanon in the 1990’s. The commission also wrot that there is “strong but indirect evidence” that the groups collaborated on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, an attack that killed 19 Americans.

The Left has been fisked to death, but there are a few salient points. In no particular order:

The bombing at Khobar also wounded 372 people – it wasn’t just a watertank that fell on top of a Vanagon full of American tourists.

Why is the 9/11 Commission the only credible source of information for the Slate graphics designers?

Sunnis and Shiites hate each other. But they hate the US and Israel more.

After lending aid, comfort, and training to a supposed enemy, can we not just call these two friends? More to the point, why am I worried about what Hezbollah thinks of al-Quaida? I mean, other than trying to sniff the nuance, it’s really enough to brand them both enemies, declare war on them, and kill them. If they kill each other, or even throw stink bombs at each other, that might be bonus.

Look, I’m all for undertanding the enemy – I really am. But I’m tired of the fairly simple goals of the GWOT being obfuscated behind layers of meaning and understanding that is imposed in USA Today style graphics proferred by the Left. Clicking on a relationship matrix seems to hinder the salient point: most of the groups and countries on the axes of this picture want to kill us or do us harm, and will do so unless we kill them first.